guide Archives - Tim Gander, Photographer, Bristol

December 13, 2018December 13, 2018 by Tim Gander

Work Experience Advice

Perhaps the best piece of advice I can offer any student of photography when seeking work experience is let the application itself be part of the experience. I should preface by saying that I rarely offer work experience placements for a multitude of reasons I won’t go into here, but follow a few simple rules and your application will stand a better chance of finding success.

Get the photographer’s name right and use it. Just saying “Hi” suggests you’re sending a round-robin email.
Don’t send a round-robin email and NEVER use the CC or even BCC functions to send out mass communications.
If you cut and paste an email text, make sure you tailor it to each individual recipient.
Do your research. Look at the photographer’s website to establish whether they’re working in the specific field you’re interested in.
Talk about the kind of photography career you’re interested in, but more in terms of the business than the style. Saying you like to photograph people isn’t the same as saying you want to shoot pictures for businesses (what I call corporate communications photography).
When looking at a photographer’s site, look at the kind of work they’re doing and establish from that whether they’re studio-based, work only on location or a mixture of the two. Students often ask to join me in my studio, but it’s possible to work out from my website that I don’t have one.
Make sure your contact details are correct, including mobile number and email address.
Check your spelling, punctuation and grammar and get someone else to check it for you – this should be someone who is really good at checking these things, so ask a teacher, lecturer or other competent person.
Be sure to include your ability to travel – do you have your own transport?

I could go on, but hitting these main points should get your toe in the door at least.

A young blonde female and her brunette boyfriend holding cameras and smiling at the camera.

Keen with a camera? Try work experience.

Although I can’t often offer work experience, a competent application will at least get a response from me. Usually I’ll make an offer to have a phone conversation about what the applicant wants to do in the industry, the opportunities and where else to get advice, but I’m astonished how often my email reply goes unanswered. Which of course makes it harder for the next student to get a response from me.

Work experience can be invaluable, it’s how I started out as a press photographer, but the industry structures for training, nurturing and furthering a career have either changed or disappeared since I set out on my journey. Students today will need to find their own tracks into their chosen career, but get these basics right and you never know, you could find yourself ahead of the game and on your way to doing probably the best job in the world.

November 18, 2014 by Tim Gander

Photography Fees Explained

A couple of weeks ago I promised you an article about how photographers set their rates and where I fit into the market. Then I spotted some shiny things and got distracted and ended up writing about other stuff. Suitably self-chastised, I’m back on track and ready to tackle the subject properly.

I’ll qualify this article by admitting that I can’t explain all photographers’ rates for all genres. This article concentrates on photography for commercial usage by businesses, charities and other organisations. When it comes to rates set by social photographers (think families, pets, dinner dances and weddings) this is structured in a different way because the images aren’t generally licensed for commercial exploitation.

There was a time when commercial photographers worked up an estimate by showing the shoot costs plus their licensing fee based on usage and a fair few still do this, but in my experience I found it difficult to keep explaining all the cost elements repeatedly because the vast majority of clients booking me are not specialist in the field of commissioning photography. More often than not I’m contacted by an office secretary or perhaps an in-house or externally-hired press officer or public relations person.

This isn’t a criticism, it’s just one aspect of how the industry has changed and a few years ago I realised that things had shifted in such a way that I needed to simplify my fee structure in order to speed up the understanding of what I was charging and what was included or excluded.

Lego male minifig with camera takes picture of female minifig.

Now if I was a Lego photographer, I wouldn’t have to worry about running costs*
*random stock photo

What I ended up with was three main packages, one of which hardly anyone ever goes for (ironically my cheapest package, albeit with the greatest number of restrictions). And of the two other packages, the highest fee package is by far the most popular because it’s the most flexible.

If I break down my fees into their constituent elemets, essentially what I’m charging for is a combination of time on site, editing and processing time and the client’s licence to use the images for their corporate communications.

However, if you asked me to make that break-down specific, I couldn’t. I might be able to suggest rough percentages, but they really would be vague and not very informative.

There are of course other factors to account for. Within any freelance photographers fee there has to be an element of skill level and experience charged for. This is probably where I start to look pricey compared to someone who has just picked up a camera, read the instruction book and decided it’s their life ambition to take pictures for money. I reckon 25 years’ experience shows in how I approach clients, how I conduct myself on assignment right through to how the end results look and I consider all of these factors important and worth a premium.

Slightly more tangible are the running costs of being a photographer. Cameras, lenses and supporting equipment (batteries, chargers, bags) as well as a car and its associated costs, public liability insurance, computers, software, image hosting, image storage… All these things and more have to be considered before even a profit and salary (on which tax will be paid) need to be accounted for within a fee.

So where do my fees fit into the overall picture? How did I set them? The simple answer is that before I introduced my current structure I was spending quite a lot of time drawing up estimates for clients who were all of a certain level (SMEs to larger businesses with multiple office locations, but not the Goliath organisations with global span).

More often than not I found my estimates coming to very similar amounts by the time I’d factored in all the costs plus the licence fee. Eventually it just made sense to set up the three packages I have now and they’ve not only attracted more clients with their simplicity and up-front openness, but I spend much less time writing up estimates, which has to be a good thing.

Much of this has the air of a guessing game, but having worked out what it costs to run my business, what I need as a salary, and how many days a year I can expect to get paid commissions, it then comes down to whether I can attain the kind of quality that enough clients are willing to pay my fees to make the whole thing viable. This, in effect, is a business plan and is very much why I charge what I charge. Simple really, but also quite complicated which is probably why cheaper photographers charge what they do, but find they can’t sustain their businesses. That’s a whole other post, which I’m sure I’ve written already.

December 4, 2009August 9, 2014 by Tim Gander

Top 11 Tips for booking a photographer.

A couple of blogs ago I promised a quick guide to choosing a photographer for your project. Then I forgot and instead wrote something terribly witty about Leonardo da Vinci and infinite monkeys. I know it was witty because somebody said so. “That’s witty”, they said.

Getting back on track, here is the blog I originally promised. As a bonus I’m doing it in a top ten list sort of a form. As a double bonus, and in the style of Spinal Tap, my top ten list goes to number 11, so it’s one better than all the other top ten lists.

So here, in roughly the right order are your top 11 tips to finding, briefing and booking the right photographer for your project. This is only a rough guide of course, but it should help you with the basics.

1. You need to start by defining what the project is, and what style and quality you’re looking to achieve. From this you should be able to construct a rough brief, even if it needs adjusting later.

2. Start by looking for the photographers who can help you; specialists in the kind of photography you’re after. With each field of photography well catered for, there’s little point looking for a wedding photographer for a corporate shoot, or an interiors photographer for press shots. It just happens I don’t shoot underwater pet weddings, so please don’t ask.

3. Talk to a few photographers and get an idea of the different rates and approaches they have.

4. It’s only fair to get firm quotes based on a clear brief, so whittle down your choice and start to talk about fees, either with a couple of photographers or with the one who shoots to the style and quality you need. I went into more detail about how rates work in the last-but-one blog. The photographer can often help develop the brief at this stage.

5. A brief consists of the date, time, location, what the pictures are to be of, how many pictures are required (approximately if necessary), your contact name, email and mobile number.

6. The brief also includes what the pictures are to be used for. This also helps define the likely fees, as well as informing the photographer on certain technical and artistic considerations.

7. You will need to know the photographer’s terms and conditions. These should be pretty standard, but check them all the same. Mine stipulate a bowl of M&M’s* on arrival.

8. Allow the photographer to liaise with your designer (if you’ve hired one). It can save a lot of time if the photographer knows how the images are to fit within the design.

9. Agree how the pictures are to be delivered, what file sizes are required (the photographer will advise you on this) and how soon after the shoot they are required.

10. Make sure you liaise on any special instructions that will help the photographer – props, access to the building, parking. It’s easy to forget that photographers need equipment, some of it heavy, so a nearby parking space makes us feel valued. We have such simple pleasures. Oh and don’t forget the M&M’s.

11. Finally, you should enjoy the day. It’s a break from the office routine, and I promise I’ll share the M&M’s. Mmm M&M’s…**

*Apostrophe police, please note the apostrophe in M&M’s is there because the manufacturer put it there, though it begs the question “M&M’s what?”

**I am not paid by Mars confectionary (manufacturer of M&M’s) to promote M&M’s, however if Mars would like to make a donation of M&M’s to me, they should contact me first for my address.

in Advice 0 comments

November 16, 2009November 4, 2014 by Tim Gander

“How much?!” A guide to photography rates.

Welcome to my blog-type thing, I’m glad you could make it.

Having convinced you in my previous blog of the terrors and pitfalls of using micro-payment stock photography for your corporate website and brochure (in short, every time you use istockphoto, a fairy dies), this time around I was going to lay out what level of investment is required to hire a real photographer to take genuine photos that will make your business stand out from the generic stock crowd.

Unfortunately it’s nigh on impossible to condense all possible fee structures into a single blog article, so I’ve come up with a much better answer.

Basically, what you need to pay for photography falls somewhere between you being embarrassed at expecting so much for so little money, and the photographer being embarrassed at charging so much for something they’re professional enough to make look easy.

There, I think that covers all the bases.

Well ok, there’s a bit more to it than that, so I will try to guide you and leave you better equipped to work out what your budget should be.

The first considerations are the quality, style, creativity and experience of the photographer you’re looking to hire. Also, what the photos are to be used for and for how long. These elements will almost certainly be the most influential in setting costs.

Many photographers will quote a time rate, but others like myself will work out a project rate based on the brief and what the pictures are to be used for. This tends to reflect the true value of the work produced, while also avoiding sneakybeaky add-on charges that can crop up when a project is priced on a menu basis.

One element which is often overlooked by clients is the post production time. Post production is what gets a digital camera file into shape ready for either electronic or print use. The file straight from the camera is no use for either, so the photographer has to spend time after the shoot preparing the files for publication, including adjusting colour, exposure, resolution and many other time-consuming and rather dull tasks.

As a guide, a day’s shoot can easily equate to a half day’s post production, though this also varies from project to project. Again, in my case I’ll generally include a certain amount of post production so there are no nasty surprises later.

Ok, so you really want some hard figures? Speaking for myself a project can be as little as £190 for a locally shot PR event with a limited shelf life. At the other end of the spectrum, I have charged £1,500 per picture for complicated national projects with multiple, ongoing uses, vast coverage and a lot of planning involved.

lloyds tsb cheque presentation to housing association © Tim Gander

In that first example, the client might be slightly abashed to know that I’ve brought 20 years’ experience, £20,000 worth of equipment and free exposure in local newspapers for less than it would cost to hire a plasterer for half a day. In the latter case, I felt suitably scared of screwing up the client’s expensive campaign that I made damn sure the results exceeded their wildest expectations.

When considering the budget, try to take into account the financial return you hope to get from the exercise. If you want a good return, you’ll need top-notch pictures. Rather than trying to find the lowest talent that will do the job for your budget, it might be better to spend extra so that your project punches above its weight. Better to spend a little more and find you’ve got pictures that really project your message than find you’ve spent too little and the project fails. Ha’peth of tar anyone?

For further guidance on typical prevailing fees, see:

“NUJ Freelance Fees Guide”

Finally, if you like this lion photo I have a free A4 digital print I will send to the first UK-based reader of my blog to email me their name and address.

Until my next blog, when I’ll help you through the process of choosing a photographer, take care, and I wish you all the best with your business.

“Tim Gander is a press, PR and commercial photographer based in Somerset, who likes to talk about himself in the third person”

in Advice 0 comments